Descartes & Marxism:
Selected Bibliography

Compiled by Ralph Dumain

This
portion of value which is added by the
machinery, decreases both absolutely and relatively, when the machinery
does away with horses and other animals that are employed as mere
moving forces, and not as machines for changing the form of matter. It
may here be incidentally observed, that Descartes, in defining animals
as mere machines, .saw with eyes of the manufacturing period, while to
eyes of the middle ages, animals were assistants to man, as they were
later to Von Haller in his “Restauration der
Staatswissenschaften.” That Descartes, like Bacon,
anticipated an
alteration in the form of production, and the practical subjugation of
Nature by Man, as a result of the altered methods of thought, is plain
from his “Discours de la Méthode.” He
there says:
“If est possible (by the methods he introduced in philosophy)
de
parvenir à des connaissances fort utiles à la
vie, et
qu’au lieu de cette philosophie spéculative
qu’on
enseigne dans les écoles, on en peut trouver une pratique,
par
laquelle, connaissant la force et les actions du feu, de
l’eau,
de l’air, des astres, et de tous les autres corps qui nous
environnent, aussi distinctement que nous connaissons les divers
métiers de nos artisans, nous les pourrions employer en
même façon à tous les usages auxquels
ils sont
propres, et ainsi nous rendre comme maîtres et possesseurs de
la
nature” and thus “contribuer au perfectionnement de
la vie
humaine.” [It is possible to attain knowledge very useful in
life
and, in place of the speculative philosophy taught in the schools, one
can find a practical philosophy by which, given that we know the powers
and the effectiveness of fire, water, air, the stars, and all the other
bodies that surround us, as well and as accurately as we know the
various trades of our craftsmen, we shall be able to employ them in the
same manner as the latter to all uses to which they are adapted, and
thus as it were make ourselves the masters and possessors of nature,
and thus contributing to the perfection of human life.] In the preface
to Sir Dudley North’s “Discourses upon
Trade” (1691)
it is stated, that Descartes’ method had begun to free
Political
Economy from the old fables and superstitious notions of gold, trade,
&c. On the whole, however, the early English economists sided
with
Bacon and Hobbes as their philosophers; while, at a later period, the
philosopher [. . .] of Political Economy in England, France, and Italy,
was Locke.